ReferenceEdge vs. RO Innovation

Absolutely the best for managing customer references/ advocacy. Comprehensive functionality and attentive and responsive support model, and they don't charge extra to use value-add functionality, such as the automated check-in on reference status, contacts, etc. They know this field and need thoroughly and have thought of everything. Native to Salesforce streamlined deployment and up-leveled cross-company support, and also were my full partner in educating me on how to use Salesforce reporting, which is a valuable professional advantage.

Incentivized

BL is great is you're going from a manual process to something more sophisticated. I'm not sure what the competitive landscape looks like with regards to Reference Software nowadays, but when we were evaluating a few years ago, BL was ahead of all other vendors in terms of functionality and integrations with SFDC

Incentivized

• Simplifies and streamlines complex matrixed customer information
• Enables strategic engagement through easy access to customer reference accounts, contacts, content, and activities they've participated in as well as are interested in participating in
• Cross-company adoption and visibility through native Salesforce integration
• Load balancing and protection from over-use/ burnout - critical.

Incentivized

• The system provides more visibility into available references and prevents references from being over-used. It allows the client (reference) to choose how often they can be contacted in a given time period and provides a closed-loop feedback mechanism to make sure the client is providing positive responses.
• Allows account executives (sales people) to easily request references based on: product Used, customer vertical, location, account size, expertise, etc.
• Uses a “Five Star” method to show how relevant the answers are when a results are returned from a search.

• Ability to pre-populate a 'win wire' with deal info from SF. I believe this is being developed now.
• Standard organization of 'attributes' so it's easier to break out that report column into per-attribute columns.
• I like that they have an active Trello board for user suggestions and incorporate requests with each update.

Incentivized

• Unintuitive user interface
• Defensive meetings with Upland RO Innovation staff when requests for improvements are shared
• Searching features are clunky, outdated, and unhelpful

Incentivized

Boulder Logic is just so easy and is in Salesforce

Incentivized

No known issues

No known issues

The process of asking each reference how often they’d be willing to be contacted was the biggest task.
We made assumptions for current clients, and ask each new client once they become a customer.
Along with which specific skill-set they’d be willing to be a reference

We also evaluated ReferenceView from ROInnovation/ Upland. ReferenceEdge from Point of Reference was lower cost for complete functionality, plus their ongoing support model is second to none. SlapFive has great video functionality, which we may use at some point, but isn't a customer reference/ advocacy management platform. And its comprehensive marketing functionality was more than our team needed. ReferenceView was a failure, unfortunately. Way more expensive. limited functionality, and an abysmal support model.

Incentivized

While I was one of the decision makers in this process, I didn't sit on the demos for the other providers (I was brought in further in the sales process). My understanding from my team was that BL was much more configurable and support more robust integrations that the competitors

Incentivized

• Faster access to critical customer references
• 360 degree view of customer engagement
• Full visibility through comprehensive pre-built reports

Incentivized

• Lack of ability to implement references program
• Stalled deployment of program

Incentivized